


writing mysteries

by irnan



Series: interesting landings [4]
Category: Captain America (2011), Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-29
Updated: 2012-07-29
Packaged: 2017-11-10 23:56:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/472138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irnan/pseuds/irnan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I know what you're thinking - that anybody with proper sensitive feelings would rather scrub floors for a living. But I should scrub floors very badly, and I write detective stories rather well. I don't see why proper feelings should prevent me from doing my proper job.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	writing mysteries

**Author's Note:**

> So this is what happens when you write prequels: you come back to the fic that was written earlier and find that stuff happend in the prequel which you ought to have addressed in it, except you didn't know you ought to address those things because you hadn't written the prequel yet. I call it the "Princess Leia Remembers Her Mom"-Problem. 
> 
> a.k.a. Peggy Carter deals with the fact that Steve's chosen method for emoting over the serum (in "crown and anchor") was to have a threesome with Bucky and Tasha, and also gets a clue-cricket-bat to the head while she's at it. Takes place during "and don't you dare be late"; summary from Harriet Vane by way of Dorothy L. Sayers.
> 
> I don't quite know what Avengers fandom's done to me to give me OT4 feelings where I've never had any before. Hmm.

So for what's quite possibly the first time in Steve's life, something he's said has left Peggy Carter speechless.

"I," she says.

"Um."

"Wow."

"Is that a good –"

"It's an _amazed_ – well, maybe not amazed per se. To be honest with you I'm not sure I'd ever thought about... the logistics, if you like."

"The logistics worked out just fine."

"Apparently so."

Steve crosses his arms over his chest and shifts his weight from foot to foot. This is... well, he was sort of expecting this, and maybe afraid of a slap in the face, he doesn't know, she probably wouldn't shoot him, seeing as she was dead at the time, which is a fair enough reason to – and anyway, _Bucky and Nat_.

Peggy, sitting on a bar stool at his kitchen counter, crosses her legs, re–crosses them, clears her throat, crosses her arms over her chest. That does interesting things that Steve would like to see more of, but probably won't get to now.

It’ll be all right. He’ll be all right. He couldn’t stop loving her when she was dead, he’s not going to stop if she tells him she’s disgusted and doesn’t want –

But she’s Peggy. He doesn’t think she’ll do that.

"It seemed like the sort of thing you oughta know before you – before we – oh, I don't even know."

"Oh, look," says Peggy. "Two weeks ago I time–travelled, and the first thing you did was kiss me senseless. Are you _backing out_?"

"No! Not – you know – of my own accord."

"Oh," she says again, understanding. "You think, because of –"

"I don't know what the hell you think about it," says Steve. "Because I realise that – things aren't – that we're not exactly normal."

"Is it... on–going?"

He shrugs. Shakes his head. "It wasn't – there wasn't – not, like, on a regular basis. It just. Like I said, there was that thing with the serum, and it was just. Right. Then, it was... right. And I'm not going to pretend it's gone away. It's just different now, it's not always the same. Am I even making sense?"

Peggy laughs for the first time. "I don't know. What. What was it like?"

Steve doesn't need to think about that. "Intense. And – amazing, but mostly intense. It was something we kind of needed. I guess. I'm really not very good at this."

"Well, neither am I! Although I suppose we spent two years during the War talking about when we'd finally – have sex."

He wants to wince, and nearly hides it.

"Make love?"

"The twenty–first century is uncomfortably clinical about it."

"It's either clinical or cutesy however you put it."

"It doesn't have to be. Cutesy?"

"It's what Tony calls SHIELD's ease–Peggy–into–the–future–gently programme."

"Oh, they did that to me too. Just ignore it."

"And go straight to the –"

"Threesome."

"Riiiiiight."

"Don't be disparaging," he says suddenly. "Please. Don't."

Peggy looks at him. "Sorry," she says quietly. "I won't. It meant –"

"A lot. Always will."

She nods slowly. "OK."

"OK?"

"But you're here now."

He frowns. "I love you. Where else would I be?"

She sighs. "When on earth did your ideas about intimate relationships become so complicated?"

Steve pulls a face. "I thought it was easier, actually. All those – demarcations, gone."

"And if we –"

He's a bit horrified. "I'm not saying I've somehow lost the ability to be faithful. Just that. There was that, before, and you're not dead so now it feels sort of like during, and it meant something – call it – call it friendship or comfort if you don't want to call it love, I don't care, but it was there and – I thought you ought to know. Apart from anything else I'm not keen on getting shot at again."

Peggy puts her head in her hands and laughs again, helplessly. "You're hopelessly confusing. I'm not sure I like it." She sits up. "Or maybe I do. All right. But it won't happen again without –"

His mouth twitches. "Permission? Wait, what?"

"I'm not sure I'm ever going to be able to look Bucky in the face again."

"I'd worry more about Tasha if I were you," says Steve darkly.

"Don't say that, or I will."

He looks at her. "So..."

Peggy smiles. "I don't really. No. That's not true. I do care. But I won't... I won't be – stopped? By it? You don't see why it would. I... can go with that."

"So," he says again.

"So," says Peggy. "But I'm not going to start cooking breakfast and ironing and God knows what."

Steve blinks. "Did you really think I'd think you would?"

"Not really. I still had to say it."

"I get that."

 

("Talk to me," he says later.

"Talk? _Now_?"

He laughs. "It's more fun that way."

"You're – oh – you're demented. Fine. Oh, do that again – _that_ , yes. What about you? Oh, I _see_."

"I might just be really fond of your voice," he admits.

She manages to laugh back at him. "Fair enough. I'm quite partial to yours."

"Oh? – Is that –"

Gasp. "Per–perfect. Love you."

"Love you too.")

 

"I almost want to thank you," she says to Bucky once before a briefing, "for looking after him. But I suppose you –"

"Had dibs?"

"Well, yes."

"Yeah. Still, it was mostly Tony and them."

Peggy pauses. So does he.

"... Not _exactly_ what I meant."

They're both still in stitches when the others arrive.

 

*********

 

Natasha is more difficult. If Peggy’s honest, she might admit she finds the other woman a bit frightening. Maria was easy to make friends with – so was Betty Ross. Jane Foster is seldom in New York, and when she is she speaks in physics, but she too is an easy woman to like, to be friends with. Pepper takes longer: she is often away, which didn’t help, and at first Peggy saw a bit too much of herself in the other woman sometimes. She was straight-laced and competent and firm; Peggy respected that on a professional level very much, but didn’t find it very easy to connect to on a personal one.

Eventually she worked out that Pepper felt much the same way about _her_. Peggy decided the best plan for sorting that out was the liberal application of alcohol in a nice little Manhattan wine bar. They began by talking about the only thing they had in common – Tony – and went from there to being a woman in what Pepper called a male-dominated industry, which of course to Peggy’s mind was all of them except perhaps midwifing, but then they were talking about a fascinating woman named Betty Friedan and gleefully massacring _Lady Chatterley’s Lover_ , and by the end of the third hour they were firm and delighted friends.

But Natasha…

Peggy’s not ashamed to admit that some of it (all of it, on her part?) is rank unpleasant jealousy. Bucky has always loomed large in Steve’s life; if sex has become a part of that, what of it? But another woman is something else entirely, even another woman who is openly and unabashedly head-over-heels for Bucky Barnes. Another woman Steve’s close to, another woman he’ll fight with and take orders and advice from on a battlefield. Another woman who’s kissed his mouth and had his hands on her breasts and –

Peggy takes _that_ frustration out on the shooting range.

She said she didn’t care. No, she said that the fact that she did care wouldn’t make a difference.

It would be easier to stick to that if Natasha didn’t keep _watching_ them. Hawklike.

Hah.

Finally, Peggy snaps. The possible – probable – folly of locking herself into a gym reinforced to hold the Hulk with a super-assassin who could shoot her from a hundred yards away and make it look like suicide with whom she intends to have a frank conversation about all the ways they don’t like each other doesn’t occur to Peggy until it’s too late, but whatever. Natasha is moving through forms, some kind of martial arts. Peggy pauses to admire the grace of her movements, her agility, the way she flows from one stance to the next; gorgeous. Waits till Natasha’s done to speak. She wore heels, deliberately, so her footsteps would announce her presence.

She can run in them if she has to, but – super-assassin. It’d be pointless.

“Agent Carter.”

Oh, isn’t that a mockery all on its own.

“Agent Romanov,” Peggy says smoothly. “You don’t like me very much. I was wondering why.”

Natasha blinks. Peggy chalks that up to a victory.

“I’m… a little wary,” says Natasha.

“Of me?”

Natasha licks her lips in a thoughtful way. “No. Of… what happens when whatever mystic hoozit that brought you here decides to reverse its effects and dumps you back in 1946 to stay.”

Peggy realises her mouth is hanging open. “… oh.”

“I don’t think either of you would deal with that very well,” says Natasha gently. “Now more than ever. Of course, you’d _have_ to. But.”

Peggy shakes her head. “That’s hardly all. You’ve always been so…”

Something hesitant flickers over Natasha’s face, but she’s nothing close to a fool. “I’m not very good at making friends,” she says. “That sounded… inane. What I mean is that… I pick them, my friends. Carefully. The Avengers, we’ve all – everyone’s come to this place by proving themselves in some way or another.”

“Everyone but me.”

“Frankly? Yes.”

“All right,” says Peggy. “I – yes. All right.” She takes a breath; her hands are shaking. She turns, sharply, on her heel, military steel in her spine but no such precision left in her movements. The gym is too bright and too cold for comfort.

The whole Tower is too bright and too cold for comfort.

 

*********

 

She rides the Staten Island Ferry for the wind in her hair and the sea-smell in her nose and mouth, eyes half-closed against the glare of sun off the waters of the bay, clutching, ridiculously tightly, an as-yet-unread copy of _Gaudy Night_ in her fingers.

To know one’s proper job, and to do it, always: this blessed plot, this earth, this realm; for queen and country, heart and stomach of a king, which of course leads on into: rather than that any dishonour should grow by me…

Peggy remembers the PM white-faced when the news came in: They’ve done it. Roosevelt’s brought them in. And the telegrams from Egypt, the screaming and cheers. We turned them back. We turned them back. Monty’s done it! We turned them back.

 _Placetne, magistra?_ With this charmed little life, this useless existence? She’s fought through despair and hardship and terror; she’s seen her city razed to the ground, bodies in the rubble, the claustrophobic horror of the Underground packed with the frightened populace of the greatest city in the world. She’s stood on the edge of Empire and known that only death and fire and a last blaze of anger was holding it together, and couldn’t even mourn it, too bloated, too unequal; never just, or fair, or particularly compassionate; if they’d at least begun the bally project by thinking they’d had a right to it, instead of just wandering in and planting a flag in all the places in the world where they thought they could make a couple quid!

Of course, Hitler had thought he’d had a right to it. Peggy remembers laughing herself viciously sick when she’d heard about that ridiculous cow Unity Mitford.

She watched all Europe slide into disaster years before Steve even knew there was going to be a war that would touch him, and watched as they held themselves on the brink – on the raggedy edge, as Tony calls it – and as they began to fight back, to scramble out.

And here she is on Staten Island Ferry, her living memories the stuff of schoolbooks and museum exhibitions, terror and triumph both, sick to her stomach because she’s been tying herself in jealous knots over Steve and Natasha and Bucky when the three of them, at least, had the bloody balls to – she wants to laugh, and then she wants to cry – to keep calm and carry on.

_Placetne, magistra?_

 

*********

 

Two days later she finds Natasha again, in the kitchen this time.

“Will you do something for me, Agent Romanov?”

Natasha crosses her arms over her chest, leans back against the counter. “Depends what it is.”

“I need an interview with the British Ambassador responsible for the UK appointments to SHIELD.”

 

*********

 

Natasha’s there when Fury gives her back her (life) status. Peggy rubs her thumb over the plastic ID, the photo, the name in block capitals. Margaret Carter, UK, Agent.

“Welcome home,” says Tasha, nudging her shoulder as they walk.

Peggy smiles. “Thank you.”

 _Placet_.

 

*********

 

Steve looks at her sometimes as if he doesn't recognise her, artist's eyes cataloguing every silly detail: face hair clothes, the shape of her body, the shoes she wears, the movements of her hands. Peggy doesn't mind. There are days when she doesn't recognise herself. Her hair curls of its own accord, but not by much; she wears less make-up, and it's as if she's laid aside one mask and now must learn to wear another, schooling her features instead of painting them; she puts on trousers every day, or almost every day, and no one even blinks to see them; she wears stacked heels and Mary Janes and flat Chelsea boots for running in.

She wears ridiculous barely-there slips of undies in red and blue and green and white and black and every other colour she wants. Petticoats she keeps, and stockings - oh, to wear stockings again! Perfect luxury. She slides them on in the mornings with delighted abandon, sitting on the bed smoothing her hands over her ankles, up her calves, she's always loved wearing stockings, and sometimes (usually) Steve's hands follow hers, tracing warmly up her legs. She'll fall against the pillow again and watch him clip the garter belt, thumb rubbing over the line between skin and nylon.

Favourite pastime: touching - being touched - by him.

Peggy carries a gun every day now, in a holster under her armpit, and can spin it like a circus sharpshooter, like Annie Oakley. She likes to sit in their lounge and brush red on her fingernails while the telly chatters. She's the first to admit she doesn't really like the thing, prefers the cinema, unless it’s the BBC. She reads and reads, they both do, seventy years of books unread, every one a revelation and a helpmeet. And Princess Elizabeth who saluted her and smiled is an old woman now. The King is dead, long live the Queen!

In November she wears the poppy at work and out of it, watches the BBC and aches for home, just a little, just enough. Wallowing, basically.

Listens to Joni Mitchell and Carole King and scoffs at Steve's Springsteen records and then discovers a surprising affinity for Britpop, for punk, the clash and scream and down-to-earth frustration of it, as if they'd taken all her girlhood chafing at society and set it to brutally uncomplicated music.

She flings a shirt of his on sometimes over a skirt and boots. It's decadently intimate, verging on immodest, most exciting of all that no one else cares.

One day they're heaped, exhausted, in Steve and Peggy's lounge. Alcohol has no effect on either of the boys, but Natasha and Peggy are lazily drunk.

Perhaps that's where their kiss comes from.

She sprawls against Steve's chest and kisses Bucky open-mouthed as Nat's fingers find the tops of her stockings; she laughs as she hooks her nails in, ready to tug, and Steve says, low, by Peggy's ear, "You know, the great advantage of those is - you don't actually have to do that," and Peggy makes a noise between a laugh and a moan and says, "And you wondered why I like them," so that Bucky laughs too, and Steve unsnaps her bra and slides his hands beneath the red cups and says, "Not for long."


End file.
